By Your Blood and Mine
by Sythe
Summary: The consequences to being the vessel of the Fell Star is more than just an inability to emote. Or… Byleth growing up an alien and coping with what that means. A cosmic horror love story.


Disclaimer: I don't own anything. I'm just exercising my writing muscles and having trollish fun.

**By Your Blood and Mine**

Premise: the consequences to being the vessel of the Fell Star is more than just an inability to emote.

Or… Byleth growing up an alien and coping with what that means. Because I always thought the game was seriously downplaying Byleth (and So This Is)'s blatantly inhuman nature. Cue, cosmic horror Byleth!

And this shall be a cosmic horror love story!

* * *

**Chapter 1: Strange Little Girl Cries**

* * *

It takes until she is seven years old for Byleth to realize she dreams of dying during birth every night. The same dream repeats day after day, year after year, from the earliest moment she can remember. And it goes like this.

She is born, not red-faced and squalling, but gray and still as stone. Cold hands take her from an equally still mother, wipe black blood from her brows. There is a quiet sound of a woman crying. It is a weak sound, choked with approaching death. She is dead upon delivery. She dies in the womb, dies long before her eyes will open to see light and her mouth open to draw breath.

Now the crying stills, and then there is a voice, begging.

Take the goddess from me, says the voice in strained whispers, as if it is taking everything from the speaker to utter these words. Take the goddess from me and give her to my baby.

The stillness that follows speaks of shock and despair. The cold hands hold her tight, almost squeezing. She might have protested, had she been born alive. But she isn't, so she lays quiet, weak flesh growing stiffer by the second.

I beg of you, says the voice of the crying woman once more, please.

There is a pause, and then finally, another voice speaks.

You will die.

Even so, I accept this price, says the whisperer. Let me pay it, in the place of my daughter.

...Very well.

And then suddenly, she is opened in the chest with sharp, cold steel. Hands push her bones aside and stretch her newborn chest open to show her tiny, unbeating heart. A thing, hard and round, is inserted into her. And for that single moment, it is as though the weight and girth of an entire world is forced into her.

It is crushing, consuming. She is an insect quashed under the weight of a mountain.

She dies once more in a flash of light, and when she next opens her eyes, she is being held by a terrified father as he flees a burning church.

When a seven years old Byleth finally tells her father this, there is nothing the man can do, but stare at his daughter in quiet, helpless horror.

* * *

Byleth is nine, and everyone around her agrees she is strange. The disagreements only occur when it comes to deciding whether it is a bad kind of strange or a good kind, and to what degree strange really stretches.

She's a smart child to the numerous tutors her father takes in over the years. Smart, and quiet, and very well behaved, the best student a teacher can ask for. She soaks up their lessons like a sponge soaks up water. By age three, she already has all her letters, and well on her way with her numbers. And by age six, you can talk to her of rudimentary scientific crafts. The ABCs to preparing a vulnerary, baby steps to suturing a man's wounds.

Jeralt's mercenaries disagree. What ordinary child needs their numbers by age three? Not even the noblespawns start such lesson until five, and even well-to-do merchant's gets need there's only by age twelve at the earliest.

She never laughs, nor cries. The mercenaries like this. The killing business is tough enough without caring for the boss's baby girl on top of that. It's good too, that she won't spook at a little bit of blood now and then. But the nurses and nannies in the villages they pass by don't. Children are meant to make fusses, they say. That girl, they add in whispers behind her father's back, is unnatural.

She has a big appetite, easily eating taverns and cantines out of their stock for the day, or even the week. The nurses think that's no big deal. A growing girl needs her num-nums, the women coo at the sight of the toddler Byleth whaling down plate after plate. But the other children are wary. There's something scary about her ravenous appetite. When a little girl manages to out-eat a man ten times her size it ceases to be cute and starts to become frightening. There is something deeply upsetting about that kind of indiscriminate hunger.

She's always hungry, the children whisper. It's like she's never full, like the food alone isn't enough. What normal person upon finishing a suckling pig all by herself would ask for more? She's a monster put into the form of a creepy little girl, and that monster always seems to hunger.

Once, a teenage girl babysitting her fussy little brother wields Byleth against her siblings like a cudgel. Still your squalling, she says. Or I will put you on the golem's dinner table and she will eat you in between the meat and the pies. You know she will.

By nine, Byleth is given her first sword. But she kills her first man by eight. A company man neck deep in debts has the bright idea to keep the boss's baby as he asks for an emergency loan. She takes one look at her father's face, terror and anger warring in it, and thinks. He is the only person she loves in her life, the only one who won't recoil at her oddity, who, in spite of her grim, disquieting gaze and unnatural silence, still tucked her into bed at night, still reads to her, still sings her to sleep. In his clumsy way, he's trying his best to show her that he loves her too, the only way he knows how.

Byleth promptly decides that she doesn't like that look on her father, and so says unto the man.

_Please put me down. I want to go home._

She has been polite too, as father always tells her to. But the man only yells at her. So then, her hands are forced. If the man will not listen to her words, thinks the eight years old little girl, then she will make him listen with her actions.

There is a place in the chest, her father has once said, where something beats for every living person… but not for you. You must hide it.

What she takes from it is: there is something important in the chest for everyone but her, and the difference between it beating and not beating is the difference between someone living and not living.

It actually doesn't take much effort at all, to bring one chubby toddler hand up and put it against the company man's chest. He's been distracted, as is her father, and his hands busy with holding a sword and keeping her tight in his grip. And child of acclaimed mercenary captain or not, she has still been just eight. Nobody in their right mind would expect a child of eight to have the strength to crush a man's heart through his ribcage. Indeed none at all.

And yet, this is what happens. It is almost anticlimactic, the way he suddenly chokes, the words faltering from his wine crusted mouth, and then wobbles. Byleth can even hear the stuttering of his heart in her hand, through the bunched up hemp and grimy flesh, hear the quiet but unmistakable crackling of bones and ruptured vessels.

As the man falls onto the ground in a pale, boneless heap, Byleth gazes upon him and then upon her tiny hand which has effortlessly taken the beating of his heart from him and thinks.

Humans are so fragile.

She hasn't meant to actually kill him, merely encumber him enough for her father to come swooping in and save the day. But he was as cotton gauze and brittle glass in her child fist.

She looks then to the face of her father, horror and relief in stark contrast, and thinks. It is yet one more thing about her that she must hide from this world.

* * *

Byleth has her first blood at thirteen years old. She has been half expecting it. There are few other woman mercenaries in their companies, but where there are fighting men with coins to spend, there will also be women willing to sell their virtue for the right amount. Most of them are jaded, bitter things, but some of them are kind enough to caution a young girl in the company of roadworn, grizzled men that there will be differences to come. There are talks of blood, of woman pain, of flowering and oozing honey in the eyes of men.

As Byleth gazes at the things slithering from her as she stands naked in a secluded stream, she thinks.

That does not look like honey.

There is blood though, a lot of it, flowing freely like rotten wine from between her thighs. But there are also other things. Gray and gleaming in the water, curling around the pale columns of her legs. More grow from her hips, her backs, the hollow between her breasts. Slithering things, fleshy and bony in alternating patches. Thorns and claws that grow in places where they shouldn't. Glittering, translucent scales that look halfway to pretty under the shining moon. Feathers that form stunted, misshapen wings, and eyes that open upon them to look back at her.

She sits down, the water going up to her neck, and watches silently as these things come crawling from her. She is not afraid, merely bemused. None of the women mentioned anything like this… but it also doesn't hurt, which is something they warned her about.

Before long, her legs are consumed in a curtain of fleshy protrusions, and her arms and hips are draped in skeletal wings. A necklace of blinking eyes hugs her shoulders and throat, and by the gasping sounds coming from under the water, she thinks she might have grown more mouths.

She stays like this for a while, silent and watching as her body grows and twists in weird ways until sounds start to reach her ears. She startles. She must have been away for too long, because those are the sounds of people searching for her, of father searching for her. She hears her name being called.

There is a moment when she thinks to step from the water and head towards him, but that moment passes like night dew in the face of a desert sun. There is a moment when she thinks to answer to the sound of her name being called somewhere beyond those shrubberies, but the sound dies before it leaves her throat.

She looks down at her body, warped and strange and inhuman. The things move as her gaze falls upon them once more. Feathers tremble. Flesh and bone tentacles wriggle obscenely. Eyes blink like gems under the light of the moon. She thinks then of all the times the other children, the villagers, and even the company men muttered names under their breath when they thought her back was turned.

Unnatural

Golem

Little creep

She's young, not stupid. She knows she doesn't play by the rules that ordinary children are supposed to. Her body refuses to partake in that game called growing up the normal way. She knows too that father, always quiet and grim faced if he's not overcome with that faded sorrow that clings to him like a cloak, goes to deal with them every single time without ever telling her. Father takes special care with her and with them, like a stone bulwark that keeps both sides safe and contained from each other. He moves whenever her strangeness attracts too much attention, fires the mercenaries who won't play by his rules, finds her new playmates and tutors when the old ones eventually find her oddities overwhelming.

He loves her, that is without question. But if Byleth comes back to him like this, as a little girl with tentacles for legs and wings sprouting from her shoulders and hips, and eyes and mouths in places where there shouldn't be, then even the famed Blade Breaker would find it hard to accommodate this new strangeness.

She slinks further into the water, now ice cold, wet waves licking her chin. Her… legs… stumble their ways forward, propped up by new fleshy appendages. Awkwardly and slowly, she starts to move away from the sound of her name being called over and over again.

She hears panic creeping into his voice, hears the edge of fear coming in. This part of the road where they are camping at is relatively quiet, but one never knows what stray robbers or bandits might be prowling about these woods. A young girl on the fringe of becoming a woman, her loveliness teetering on the verge of blooming, bathing alone in a stream in the dark woods. It's the beginning of black tales she has heard a thousand times over. Sometimes the girl is set upon by brutes and robbers, sometimes by wild beasts and demons. Sometimes she is lucky and merely slips on wet rocks and dies in the water. Her corpse is sometimes found, sometimes not. And rarely, she will even be immortalized in tales and songs, pale and beautiful and quiet as the moon.

What tales will be told of the Blade Breaker's daughter? She thinks. This time, the girl herself becomes the monster. Black tale indeed, but in a vastly different way. Will she be found? Will it be her father that finds her or will it be his mercenaries? And what will they see? The girl? Or the monster? And how will they react? With open arms or thirsty blades?

Involuntarily, a shudder goes through her. She thinks of the brutes restrained by her father's authority and sheer martial prowess, and then of the dark whispers kept only at bay because she is father's daughter. It will not be enough now, in the face of this monstrous form.

Will her corpse be found? Not pale and beautiful but wretched.

She runs now, urged on by the panic in his voice and the panic in her own aching heart, her tentacle legs thrashing, pushing her forward, her malformed wings beating wildly, scales and claws grasping blindly at the riverbed. She can't be seen like this.

She dives into the water, her new limbs feeling more at ease in the depths than on the ground. Her chest aches, not from pressure but from the thought of that same look on father's face when he sees her… if he sees her. The revulsion, the fear, the hate, same as almost every other face that has looked upon her naked inhumanity and recoiled.

He will never see her, she swears, for that thought is unbearable.

She runs, swims, crawls into the heart of the woods. She runs until night gives into day, and runs until day gives into night. Her body doesn't tire, doesn't hurt from the nicks and scratches. There is a hunger though, gnawing in the pit of her stomach.

On the third night, driven by this very same hunger, she stalks a brown bear into its cave, falls upon it, and gorges herself on it. It is barely enough for her to feel a little less hungry.

Shaking off the last of the bear guts and bones, she crawls to the bottom of the cave, and there falls in a heap on cold stone ground. Her thoughts swim feverishly in her head.

What does she do now? Where will she go? What will become of her?

Byleth curls into herself, her new limbs enveloping the girl-shaped center. Now that the hunger is not roaring in her ears anymore, she feels tired and worn. A little girl lost and alone in the world.

She doesn't cry, but rather sniffles herself to sleep. Her dreams are of cold-eyed villagers and stone-faced children. Women of the night hold hands and dance around her, bare bodies, bare feet, and hair unbound. Their lips are red like fresh spilt blood as they smile at her. They warn her of woman pain and ceasing to be a little girl, of flowering and being devoured by men and devouring men in turn.

Little star, you are as blood and honey. Sing us a lullaby and dance as the men come to claim you. Whether you will be eaten or eat in turn, who will know?

The meat of men is sweet, they say, but poisonous. Once you have fed on them, you may never go home again.

* * *

She wakes to the sound of rocks falling.

She sits and looks up, and there at the mouth of the cave stands her father. He is old and worn and haloed by the sun. He looks at her, wide eyes and wide mouth. He looks at her red stained hands and red stained lips. He looks at the bones and guts on the ground. He looks at the eyes on her throat and shoulders, the wings coming from her arms and hips, the tentacles that droops about her legs. His sword hand is on the hilt as he looks back at her.

Byleth is frozen where she sits. A million thoughts run through her head as her heart threatens to collapse in on itself. How did he find her? Why did he find her? How could he have even kept up? Is this even real? Is she still dreaming? She had run without stopping for days, run until the shadow of the woods blots out the sun, run so deep into its depth she was sure she would never find a way out. She was sure too that none could follow her.

Her father, who is like a stone statue carved in black and white, moves forward with glacial slowness. His footsteps echo the stone chamber.

She is suddenly transfixed by the lines of shadows and light writ on him, how they bring out every harshness that time has visited upon him. There are cuts and scratches all over him. His clothes are stained with sweat and blood. His satchel is torn, the scabbard of his sword spidered with cracks.

His feet glide over the dark patch of dried bear blood on the ground, knock aside the bones and guts. His cast shadow comes closer, comes to engulf her.

Unbidden comes the thought. Has the father given chase for as long as the daughter has run? Abandoned his men to pour all into one single-minded pursuit? It must be, for how else would he find her here?

He is close, an arm span away. And here he stops, looking down upon her. She sees herself in his sunken eyes. The little girl Byleth is no more, in her place, a creature of lurid nightmares realized.

Now a fissure seems to open up where her heart used to be. She looks him in the eyes, child to father. His sword hand is still on the hilt, and here she thinks.

Are you here to kill me?

But the words don't come for her throat is clogged by a thick soup of shame and despair. There are times past when Byleth wondered why she was born this way, if her strangeness had a source, if father perhaps harbored some secret of his own which would be the answer to the puzzle that is her existence.

She watches shadows dance in father's eyes, watches as tension coils in his arms, in the stiff set of his shoulders.

But perhaps there was never a point to her wondering. Perhaps it is better this way, simpler this way. He will be free and so will she.

She closes her eyes, tries to keep the sobs from coming through her gritted teeth, spreads her arms wide. She speaks no words for she doesn't trust herself not to falter and break to pieces.

Let this tale end differently, she besieges whatever goddess looks upon them. Let a father and daughter be released. Let the sun come in the wake of a long night.

There is a long suffering moment, then the sound of steel being drawn.

It comes, she thinks as a weight is suddenly lifted from her. It will be quick, like the thousand times she has watched the same blade eat the flesh of countless others.

… But it doesn't come. Instead, there is the clanging of steel hitting rocks. And then father's arms are suddenly gripped tight around her.

Her eyes flash open in bewilderment, and there is father's face in front of her, and he is crying.

"I thought I lost you," he says through broken sobs. It is the first time she has ever seen him cry.

And just like that, it is as if a dam is lifted from her chest and something comes gushing forward. Suddenly, she is crying too, for the first time in her life.

"Daddy," the word comes trembling from her mouth as she winds her malformed arms around him and holds him close. "Daddy, I was so scared."

* * *

The truth comes out in the wake of it all.

Her father is an immortal, forged with the blood and blessing of the Archpriest. By the time he met her mother, father had lived the life of an ordinary man several times over. Mother too is no ordinary person, though the full truth of what she was remains a mystery to even father. And then finally, there is the archpriest herself, the owner of the second voice in Byleth's recurring dream and the one who, by the words of her dying dream mother, put the goddess into Byleth and granted her life.

The end of that tumultuous day finds them sitting together, not in that dank, bloody cave, but by a stream where Jeralt spears freshly caught fishes over campfire to feed his ravenous teenage daughter.

"I never should have hidden the truth from you," he mutters quietly, almost to himself.

Byleth sits beside him, meekly munching on a badly grilled trout. Bland, her tongue supplies. The fish is fresh but they don't have salt or things like that. It's not like Jeralt had the time to pick up emergency cooking supplies before running after a suddenly estranged daughter.

She glances at him from the corner of her eyes. He seems livelier now, with the glow of campfire lifting his visage, lighter somehow. The cast of his face is not so grave anymore, and the set of his shoulders not so tense. It is, perhaps, because there now exists no more secrets between them.

She licks her chapped lips, thinking about the one question floating about her mind and how to word it.

"What was… mom like?"

He goes rigid, then turns around to look at her, eyes wide in stupor.

Byleth ducks her head, wings curling in agitation. Did she mess it up? Is it still not alright to ask? She has thought… with how secret after secret have come spilling from his mouth, that it is now alright to ask about things they never talk about, like mom, like father's past, like herself and how she was born, and the reason why they have been on the run for as long as she has lived. They have been running from the church, Byleth knows now, running from the archbishop who started her strange existence and who terrifies father so.

But perhaps it is too soon, and things still too new.

But then that look bleeds out from his face. Jeralt sighs deeply, throwing yet another nearly charred fish on a plate made of leaves. He searches his satchel for his wine flask, takes a deep swig, then turns to his perplexed daughter determinedly.

He is silent for a minute, face screwing in concentration. Then…

"... I'm a fucking coward." He brings one hand to rub at his eyes tiredly.

"I can… wait," Byleth offers shily. She has wondered for years. It's not like she can't wait a little while more.

But Jeralt only waves her away.

"No, I… I owe this to you. And it's been… years. I should be over this."

But he isn't. She knows. For all that he rarely mentions her, it is without a doubt that her father loves her mother deeply. She is the ghost that brings his smiles on rare summer days, the touch of sorrow that doesn't quite leave his eyes when he looks upon Byleth. He says she is the spitting image of her mother, poured from the same mold. It could not be easy for him to revisit her memories.

It takes a moment more for Jeralt to center himself. Looking into the fire, he speaks at last.

"When I met your mother for the first time, I thought I had died and gone to heaven, and she was the angel who greeted me at the door…"

If Byleth were expecting something, that atrociously corny line definitely was not it. She stares incredulously at her father. But he merely laughs at her gobsmacked face.

"I had tried to kill myself two days before you see," he continues. "And when I woke up and saw her, I thought I had succeeded."

… Oh…

"What does life mean when one is an undying soldier? I have lived a long life, little one. I have known women… I have been a husband and a father… long before you came to be."

He nurses his wine flask, lost in thoughts.

"Men like me, men who know nothing but how to wield a sword and obey orders, we shouldn't live such long lives. We don't know what to do with ourselves.

My first wife was… I was in my twenties. That was a long time ago. We had no children. Maybe that was better. Because I woke up on the day of my fiftieth birthday, and she was gone. Left during the night without saying a word. Didn't leave anything for me either. No letters. No words through friends and all."

She doesn't know what to say to that. But perhaps there is nothing she can say. These are old wounds, ones that have long since scabbed over.

"I don't blame her. It must have been hard, living with a man who doesn't age for thirty years. What kind of husband would that man make?"

The fishing rod which he has set up by the stream trembles. He gets up and starts reeling it in. It's a herring. He takes the thrashing fish with one hand, spears it with another. It goes to the pile, waiting for its turn on the fire and then into her bottomless stomach.

"I got married again ten years after. I'd met a lovely woman you see, and I figured I had spent enough time mourning. We had three children. A boy and two girls. They were good kids."

He sits back down once more, takes a fish, spears it, sets it on the fire.

"There was war that year. Big one. My boy went to war a knight and came home in a box. My two girls grew up, got married, moved away. Then it happened again. One day my wife told me to come stand by her in front of the mirror. I did that and she asked. What do you see?"

He looks at her for a brief moment.

"What do you think I saw?"

That he was unchanged while his woman withered. And how would that feel like? How terrible it would be? How sad and horrifying?

"But she was a religious woman, you see. So she didn't leave. And when I mentioned we could go our ways, that she could find someone for her in the twilight of her life…"

Someone normal goes unsaid.

"... she wouldn't even consider it. Then there was a plague. I buried her and went looking for my girls. One had died in childbirth. The other… "

He is quiet for a long moment, eyes far away.

"The other ran when she saw me."

He sees the look on her face, smiles sadly.

"It's not her fault," he says. "I wasn't much of a father back then," then quietly "Maybe I still am not much of a father now but I'm… I'm trying."

Byleth thinks to console her father, but she doesn't quite know how. Unbidden, a tentacle goes to rest on his thigh, its wiggling looking almost like patting. Byleth spears it with a wide-eyed look, feeling equal shares embarrassed and puzzled. But he doesn't even seem to notice, so absorbed in his own story is he.

"Point is. I wasn't a good father. I was a soldier, full stop. I was away from home more than I was in it. My family was the soldiers with whom I fought, my marriage bed the barrack cot. I saw them once, maybe twice a month, less if there was a big campaign. Her mother raised her. I was just the name that sometimes got mentioned. So… it's not her fault. I kept an eye on her for a long time. But it was a chaotic era, and I never taught her the sword like I taught you now. She died by bandits not long after. I buried her like I buried her mother, her sister, and her brother. Then I hunted them bandits down. I killed them…"

His eyes go dark. And his voice goes quiet, goes heavy.

"Slowly... "

Silence stretches between them, broken only by the crackle of campfire and the burbling of the river stream. Byleth waits patiently, busying herself with demolishing yet another fish. It couldn't have been easy to revisit these memories. Even her emotionally stunted self knows that much. Eventually, he seems to come back.

Shaking himself, he takes the charred fish off the fire, gives it to her, replaces it with another one. Herring, this time.

"Anyhow… after that… there were other women."

That's not surprising, thinks Byleth, considering his line of work. Battles have a way of making a man's blood burn, makes him seek the embrace of a woman. And he has lived a long time. What is more surprising is that she doesn't have a small army of half siblings dotted about the continent. Perhaps that too is telling something about the humanity, or lack thereof, of her father.

"Some stayed a while. Some stayed a long time. Didn't marry any of them. I learned my lesson you see. It would only end in tears. Life goes by. I hit one hundred, and then I stopped counting."

His hand goes into his satchel again, and out comes a silver badge. Byleth peers curiously at it. She has seen it now and then, and has seen something like it painstakingly painted onto the glass panel of great churches they passed by on the road. She has never asked, because back then she never thought he would answer.

"This has been with me for…" he frowns in deep thoughts. "... maybe a hundred years? Who knows?"

He turns it around in his hands.

"You were the captain of the knights? Of that Saint… what's her name?"

"Seiros," he replies. "I was the captain of the knights of Seiros, and we were the stuff of legends."

For a brief moment there is even a hint of pride in his voice, in his face, the way it lights up, and then it is drowned out by a bone deep sorrow. He looks down at his hands, goes quiet.

Byleth reaches out with her hand… her human hand, takes the badge from him. He doesn't resist, merely watches as she examines the badge. It is an old thing, dented. A leaf like shape done in the style of a noble crest. This thing is older than her, she thinks, it has been with him for longer than she has.

"You must have done many great things," she says. Her father shakes his head.

"I did nothing but kill on order."

"But you must have met people, good people," she insists, and this time he nods.

"I did. Good men and good women. My friends, my lovers. I buried them all."

Once more, Byleth ducks her head in shame and awkwardness, her wings drooping, the eyes on her throat and shoulders blinking, watering. What does it mean when a man is undying when all whom he loves leave him one by one? How does it feel?

"Is that why you tried to kill yourself?" she says finally, pushing the uncomfortable feeling to the back of her head. The last few days have been anything but comfortable for the both of them, but the more of the truth she is told, the better.

He shrugs, nonchalant.

"Maybe." He ponders her question a while more. "It gets tiring, after a full century of fighting. The faces all blur. I could hardly remember who we were fighting at one time. And when it comes to friends and comrades."

He grimaces.

"Don't know when it started, but before I knew it, I had been throwing myself at the toughest targets I could find. Thinking back, I was probably hoping one of them could do the deed, put me in the earth and let me be… finally."

Yes, she has heard the tales. The legendary Blade Breaker, an unbeatable warrior that has won more wars and battles than the months Byleth has lived. He is the knight of the church, the spear and shield of the archbishop, the defender of the faithful, the mythical name whispered from the mouths of hardened mercenaries and doe eyed villagers alike.

She watches his face illuminated by the dancing flame. How old he looks. How frail. His hair is a mess and peppered with untold age. His hands are worn and chipped and brittle looking. His sword is missing, lost among the detritus of her feast, among the fish guts and bones.

Where is the shining knight of the legends? He is not here, for here is the man who tucks her into bed every night, even when those beds are sometimes thatch straws amidst a hasty camp; the man who sings to her now then, rusty lullabies coming from a mouth completely unused to uttering them. He tries, and sometimes he fails, but then he always tries again, to be a father to a strange little girl with a stone carved face and an unbeating heart.

The silence stretches. Father looks down into the water where the line of his fishing pole disappears into, lost in thoughts.

"And then one day, I got into," he starts again. "Bit of a problem. I was fighting a…" he frowns. "Can't recall actually. But maybe it doesn't matter. Point is… he was good and I made mistakes, maybe on purpose, I don't know. The end of it is that neither of us walked away from that looking pretty. That guy died. Obvious. I thought I did too. But apparently I didn't. Your mom's handy work I've been told."

There is a ghost of a smile in the crook of his mouth now.

"I woke up, and I met her… and the rest is history."

He stops there, reels in his pole with a sudden jerk. A fish goes flying out of the water. He catches it with one deft hand, guts it, beheads it, tosses it onto the pile. He takes a count of the fishes, checks the fire. He says,

"That should be it for today. Tomorrow I'll see if I can find some more bears for you. Maybe fashion some capes for you to wrap around with," he motions to her near naked form, wrapped in his tattered traveling cloak. It is barely enough to cover her still human bits. "Now,"

He pats her on the head.

"Bed time, kiddo."

Byleth stars at him wide eyed, mouth agape. A hot feeling snakes into her chest. Surprise and frustration and something else un-named. This is a story she has been dying to hear for years, and to have it cut short like this…

"That… can't be all of it…" she says slowly, frowning at father in frustration. But that only gets him to pipe right back.

"Oh you want the dirty of it, huh? Are you sure you are old enough for that?"

She flushes at the teasing look in father's eyes, feeling strangely out of character. She crosses her arms around her knees, hunkering down and trying to work out some sort of reply as he spreads out their sleeping mats next to the fire.

"But…" she says after a minute of furious thinking. "Why, father? Why her? Why mom?" She swivels around to look at him in the eye.

"You said it yourself. You have been a husband and father. There were women in your life. You weren't strangers to them. Why is mom different? What sets her apart from… from the others? Why do you…" she thinks over her words carefully "... change… for her?"

He is quiet for a long time at Byleth's question, just sitting there with the unrolled mat in his lap and slowly taking her in. She wonders what he sees. He looks at her, eyes dark and wandering and sad. She squirms under his gaze, uncomfortably aware of how freakish she looks, how different from the Byleth a few days before. Unbidden, her skeletal wings tremble in agitation. She looks at them in mortification. One hand comes up without thought, as if to make them stay still and not make a spectacle of themselves.

Quietly and more quickly than she is prepared for, father takes that outstretched hand. He holds it gently but firmly. He turns it around, marveling at the featherlike bones that grow from its crooks, the gray thin tubes that extend from its flesh, the blinking eyes that stare balefully at him. Her hand is grooved and clawed and yet somehow still looking more delicate than she remembers it to be.

"Because," he says finally. "I saw myself as you no doubt does now. A monster, albeit one that is better hidden" She flinches, but father doesn't even seem to notice. He seems mesmerized now. "And I think my previous wives saw the same. Maybe everyone else in my life saw it too. My children. My friends."

He lets go of her hand, pats her on the head.

"But your mom saw a man in me. Not a knight or a saint or… " he pauses, and she vaguely guesses he's thinking of less than polite things he has been called in the past. "... just... a man. That's all. And that alone makes me want to live, if only for her."

He smiles now, a tired but genuine smile that somehow still manages to light up his face and bleed the years from his features.

"Little one, I hope one day you will find someone who will see you like your mom saw me too."

* * *

The tale of the Blade Breaker, say the mercenaries left behind by a frantic Jeralt Eisner, has a grim end. For while he seems invincible in battle, he does have a weakness, as all mortal men are wont to. And this weakness takes the form of his only daughter. Sweet thing, croon some, with eyes like gems and a face like a porcelain doll. Delicate limbs and pale, milky skin, her fawn-like curves inching towards ravishing.

Bereft of Jeralt's leadership, they scatter to the four winds, some keeping to their trade, joining other crews of less repute, some fall to hard times and retire in far off villages, some become bandits, some die in unmarked graves in un-named soil. But the tale carries, by the mouths of those who know of Jeralt, who hear of him, who marvel at the romance and mystique of the once knight.

One day the girl went bathing in a stream in the dark woods, and didn't return. All that remained of her were clothes discarded on the shore and blood on the bank. Strange marks marred the soil of the riverbed. Some looked like claws. Some looked like trunks. Some looked like… something others. What left these marks? What stalked the shadows of these woods? What preyed on the flesh of young maidens? Who is to know? The world of Fodlan is, after all, a dark and terrifying place full of things unexplained and things monstrous.

Her father, perhaps in grief, perhaps in anger, and absolutely without care nor preparation, bolted into the woods depths, following the trails left behind. And that is the last anyone has ever seen of Jeralt Eisner.

So ends the tale of the Blade Breaker.

But unbeknownst to those who tell this story, a father and daughter duo leave the woods a few weeks after this incident. The father is cloaked and his beard and head are shaved clean. He is completely unrecognizable from the man he was before. The girl is swaddled in billowing white cloths. Even her face is wrapped up, leaving only her eyes, gem-like, uncovered.

As they pass by tiny villages on the outskirts, the father tells inquiring merchants from whom he acquires supplies.

"She is to dedicate herself to the saint of silence," the girl nods, wordless in her nun-like cloth, "And we are to complete this pilgrimage."

And no one bothers them after that, for all know to leave those dedicated to the goddess alone or risk the wrath of the church. But they don't go to the church, to the grand Garreg Mach monastery. Instead, the place where they arrive at is one that has been in the shadow of the great monastery for close to a millenia. The Witch's Maw, and beyond it…

"The Abyss," whispers the father to the daughter. "How are you holding up?"

He is holding her hand, and so can feel the squirming under the flesh.

"I am holding," she says softly, wings and tentacles straining tightly under billowing cloth. She is trying her hardest to hold it all together, constricting the volume of her body into an acceptable size under the cloth. It is less difficult than when she first started out, but it is still no small task. She looks into the cavern, into the darkness that seems to stretch on forever.

"Are you sure?" she whispers. Is this the place, she thinks, where all outcasts are accepted and all monsters can be humans at least for a little while? Is this the place? Beyond that will be the land of no return. Land of the abandoned, of the lost. She has heard the stories. It is no soft, gentle cradle. She looks then to her father, and thinks of all that he will have to leave behind once they descend into its depth.

"I am sure," her father says. He squeezes her hand. It is warmer than she remembers it to be. "What you are, what you will be, we will find out here. Be brave, my star, because I will always be with you."

Together, they take the first step into the Abyss.

* * *

**End Chapter 1**

* * *

**Sythe**

AN: This story is meant to be a companion story to my other FE 3 Houses story 'Forge the New Sun'. They are mirror concepts as I want to explore the duality of Sothis. On the one hand, she is a divine uplifter who wields magitech hitherto unimaginable. On the other, it is directly stated in the game that Sothis is:

1/ An alien entity who descended on the continents eons ago and upon encountering ancient humans, changed her forms to be something easier for them to perceive. She is completely removed from the line of the creator goddess Ashunera (the true creator goddess of the previous continents in Fire Emblem series with the exception of FE Fates) and the divine dragons created by her (ala Naga, Tiki, etc…).

2/ Has some sort of flesh crafting ability as she created (not birthed) the Nabaeans using her blood, and seeing as the Nabateans have the natural ability to stay in human form and can directly interbreed with humans, potentially human flesh.

And that's not mentioning the inherent lovecraftianess of the holy relics in the game: living weapons (the ingame models of the weapons can be seen twitch and vibrating, indicating a certain level of… liveliness. And they do try to take over the beaer if the bearer doesn't have the corresponding crest), the creation of Byleth's mother and her predecessors, Byleth's own birth itself, the creation of the demonic beasts, the human experimentation and wet tech of the game, the crest system, the corruption of those bearing the blood of a degrading Nabateans (ala Rhea in Silver Snow ending). Underneath its anime veneer (and the sassy loli Sothis), this game is deeply… lovecraftian, and I really want to explore that side of it.

The Sothis as expressed in Byleth in this story will draw heavily on the implications of how the Argathans see her (the fell star, abomination, etc…). This Byleth, in direct contrast with the divine Blacksmith Byleth in Forge the New Sun, will be a cosmic horror Byleth who can fleshcraft! Similarly, the plot of this story will be in contrast with Forge the New Sun.


End file.
